Tag Archives: normandy

feast or famine (& other food stories)

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Before climbing La Tour Eiffel on our final day in Paris, we stopped in at Cotume Café for some caffeine.  It had been a long morning of museums- from Musée d’Orsay to l’Orangerie- and we were hungry.  What we were truly hankering for was a good, sticky, banana-nutella crêpe, but with no venders en route and a failed attempt at visiting Blé Sucré (beware of the Parisian holiday!), we were unable to resist the exquisite bowl of yogurt behind the glass at Cotume.

As we noshed on the tangy greek yogurt, scooping bits of passion fruit and popping red currants up like we hadn’t seen food in weeks, we realized something.  Our trip had been a consistent rotation of feast or famine.  This small snack at Cotume notwithstanding (it was, after all, rather spontaneous), every meal had been one of abundance following hours of drought.  Feast or famine.  Starved or stuffed.

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The young midwestern American couple next to us (who struck up a conversation regarding the truly artistic yogurt bowl we’d since turned into a bit of a Jackson Pollack) had coined their own term for the feeling of unbalance.  They’d been experiencing a similar rhythm, and likened the state of being to that of a child after a long day at the zoo; They’ve walked their tired bones all around the grounds, waving at elephants, dancing for monkeys, and singing that one song from the Jungle Book too many times.  The sun is hot, their feet are tired.  They are zoo-zonked.  Yes.  It couldn’t have been a more accurate description.  That slap-happy exhausted feeling which stems from too much of an enviable activity.  There is only one cure for zoo-zonked individuals, and that involves a seat and a meal.

There were so many interesting food encounters during our stay…an inordinate amount of moules frites, the perfect picnic at Canal St. Martin, a Norman café owner inhaling fist-sized hunks of baguette steeped in brie, multiple iterations of our new favorite salad (the chevre chaud), the most delicious pesto-smothered escargot in Monmartre, a truly memorable omelette in Oberkampf, rows of vendors offering slices of abricot et tomate at the Bastille Marchée, flaky pastries at Du Pain et Des Idées, giant macarons and calvados-filled candies in Bayeux, rhubarb tartelettes in Pont L’Évêque, a fun cheese plate at the bar I was too shy to visit during my last trip to Paris, and striking vegetarian gold at Bob’s Kitchen.

One thing remained a constant, though; Nothing- not broken jaw bridge nor angry English coffee snob- could keep us from our daily baguette.  It was a ritual we took to with stunning fervor.  We learned early to order la tradición (the baguette’s more rustic counterpart) and found a certain pride in comparing the chewiness of this morning’s to the crunchiness of last night’s.  Of course, this amount of carb consumption does appear to negate any possibility of “famine” from our days.  Enter the subcondition of zoo-zonked: a state of possibly artificial hunger pangs induced by an insane amount of walking and/or photographing architecture.

Call us cliché, but we’d prefer culturally cloudy and zoo-zonked, if you don’t mind.

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breakfast à la beauverie

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“Here, in these gardens, my grandfather had painted in his Panama hat, and sometimes his suit, under an umbrella to keep the glare of sun from burning out all color in his work, while Stellita Steapleton or Mahdah Reddin or his daughter (my mother), Frances, or my grandmother took the sun.  Here had been formal gardens, trimmed hedges, and, the next terrace up, the cutting garden- all well fenced by hawthorn hedges to keep out animals.  Here the gardeners had worked under my grandmother’s supervision.  The yew tree, all asprawl now on the first terrace, had been trimmed in those days, and kept clipped in the shape of a basket.  Out of these gardens had come primulas; roses for the house; nasturtiums, whose cool leaves lined baskets of peaches and whose peppery blossoms made their way into salads; lavender for the linen closet; colombine; margeurites…”

–A Place in Normandy, Nicholas Kilmer

Each day in Normandy, as we road tripped from one town to the next, whoever rode in the passenger’s seat that day (usually me) read aloud from this book.  Written by the current owner’s father, the sharp novel tells the story of La Beauverie, twisting through time from pre-war roots to present-day glory.  We’ve only made it halfway through so far (though we plan to finish!), but were pleasantly surprised to learn of its colorful history, including a longtime stint as the home and studio of impressionist painter Frederick Frieseke (the owner’s great great grandfather) and an incident with an interloping owl in its dreary ’80s phase.

Among my favorite things to read about were the flourishing gardens.  One evening, after a French Little House On The Prairie moment* walking back with a basket full of laundry from the Atelier, I decided to explore the gardens on my own.  The sentiment “Everything grows in Normandy!” we’d heard again and again since our arrival proved undeniably true in the pastures facing the house, but these gardens were quite contrarily an exercise in discipline.  Each stepped layer and pruned hedge was a cultivation of constraint, a controlled crop.

I’d been planning all week to make 2 ingredient pancakes (just bananas, eggs, and spices- have you tried them?), and suddenly felt no other place would be appropriate for their consumption.  That Saturday morning, we whipped up our ‘nana-egg-pancakes (M made apple compote for topping), grabbed some Nutella (my French travel essential), and nestled into les jardins.  No other description is necessary, it was every bit as wonderful as it sounds.

 

*These happened often.  I took a certain pleasure that week in strolling by the cows, calling them Lucy or Mindy or Grace, and pretending this was actually my life.

paintings of the garden by Frederick Frieseke.

a beach day in normandy: trouville edition

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It was the coldest, cloudiest day of our entire trip.  So we went to the beach.  When life gives you lemons, right?

After a little research (and I mean little), we packed up our towels (also little) and headed for Trouville.  What a pleasant surprise!  We’d been to several coastal towns in Normandy that week, but this was by far the most charming.  Families sharing ice cream cones, kids playing soccer in the sand, and so many striped beach tents.  M was pretty taken with the architecture just along the beach and I was totally transfixed by the murals everywhere.  They almost looked like a page torn out of an old children’s book, so sweet and faded.

We immediately took to the water.  There was splashing and superman-ing and somersaulting through the waves before returning to our teeny towels for apples and a swig of Calvados.  Ahh, the beach life.

Dinner that night was a slighty un-French round of tapas at a wine bar in town, served by a happy man who did not speak English.  He learned quickly of our language barrier, but decided not to dumb anything down.  Instead he spoke in such a diverse range of tones and inflections that the actual combinations of sounds and letters being used did not matter much.  We understood each other just fine, and he quickly became one of our favorite interactions.  That night we realized the human-to-human connection is far more powerful than any organized arrangement of words.

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a beach day in normandy

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Disclaimer:  This is not a story about our visit to the D-Day beaches.  This is a story about something else that happened on the day of our visit to the D-Day beaches.  It was the day of the poppy, the day we picked wildflowers at Omaha and crawled through bunkers at Pont du Hoc.  Perhaps most importantly, though, it was the day we met The Cider Man.

M and I were driving away from Omaha Beach, back towards Mesnil.  We were both silently looking for some procrastination to postpone the hour long drive home when we spotted the little wooden plank signaling “CIDRE”.  I gasped, he nodded, and we pulled in past the trees and under a grand stone arch.  M put the Polo into park and I looked up to see an open garage, chock full of surfboards, rakes, and other residential oddities.  A mustachioed man stood outside, greeting us with a Bonjour! and a big smile.  Had we just parked ourselves in someone’s private driveway?

Perhaps, yes.  But we decided to get out and acknowledge the kind gentleman, who seemed to be welcoming our intrusion, if that was indeed what was going on.  He continued speaking gingerly en français, and we smiled, followed and listened.  It was not until we reached the inside of the bar/cider shop area and he pointed at a huge map, land all stuck with little pins, that he broke into english asking, “Where do you come from?”

We placed our pins in Boston and Providence (where there was already one little pin waiting for mine to meet it, how cool!), and our Cider Man offered to try out his “not good” english (ps, it was actually perfect).  He skipped behind the bar and told us all about his cider.  He taught us about Normandy’s famous Calvados, its bubbly and apèritif counterparts, and the family farm that had been making it for generations.  As we sipped samples of the spoils, he told us about Châteaux Normands and Le Portail, the arch we’d just passed through.  The tall entryway and the original tower to its left were built in the 12th century, and the estate had been in the family for hundreds of years.  He told us about the history of the land, Norman apples, cows and cheese.  We talked about his brother (uncle? cousin?) who went to Michigan State, and his visits to Texas.  We talked about gun control and terrorism, American politics and World War II.  The astonishing thing was, that big smile never faded from its home beneath his pristine ‘stache.

Twenty minutes later we were heading toward Pont du Hoc, fresh Calvados in hand and the reflection of The Cider Man’s infectious smile plastered across our faces.  Àperitif and new french friend.

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sandcastle in the sky

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These pictures really speak for themselves, so I’ll keep this brief.  Our visit to Mont St. Michel can be summarized as follows:

A glorious walk approaching the castle-like mammoth.

A sunny trek through Duloc to the top.

An oooh, ahhh at the ant people and oil-painting-esque views below.

The desperate scarfing down of a completely subpar (re: microwaved) crêpe.

Lesson learned: no wheel, no deal.

bienvenue à la beauverie

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I must begin by saying- if you feel like you might hate me a little after seeing this collection of photos, that’s fair.  Our stay at La Beauverie (the elegant farm estate we visited in Normandy) was charmed, to say the least.  Mornings were a collection of soft light and gentle caffeination, as the sun made its lazy crawl over the mountain from the East.  Days were peppered with road trips, archeological digs in the ruined cider press just down the hill, and conversations with cows.  Our nights became a welcomed routine of cheese board crafting, vegetable grilling, and apétitif sipping on the patio.  We would eat late, just in time to watch the sun tuck in across the valley and give way to a clear starry blanket overhead, perfect for gazing and gushing.  Pure bliss, if ever I’ve known it.

The route to La Beauverie was, however, a bit less magical.  It was 95 degrees (fahrenheit) the day we travelled from Paris to Normandy, and M and I were both looking forward to swapping the city heat for a bit of countryside breeze.  Of course the air conditioning on the train was broken and no one could seem to get the windows open.  Knee-to-knee enclosed in a small car with four fellow travelers, we worked up a good 2-hour sitting sweat.

Upon arriving in Caen, the car rental process proved far less intimidating than expected.  Phew.  Oh, it’s a Volkswagon.  I have one of those.  We can do this…

No more than five minutes of smooth sailing in, our sporty little Polo was pulled over.  Six officers circled the car, posturing with strong-looking shoulders and shiny badges.  They were writing things down in notepads and speaking in muffled tones.  The largest of the group leaned down towards M and demanded his license.

“Désolé, désolé,” our flustered American accents gave us away immediately.

“Touristes?  Les Etats-Unis?”

“Oui!  Désolé…”

“What do you s’ink of Donald Trump?”

Apparently we’d driven down a bus lane.  Luckily for us, the messy political situation back home seemed to be punishment enough, and we were released with a warning.

Mindful of lanes not meant for us and round-abouts-a-plenty, we followed our digital directions to Mesnil-sur-Blangy, all the way to La Beauverie.  We turned down the dirt road for the farm, our minds a mixture of exhaustion and excitement.  Confusion was soon added to the mix, morphing into skepticism as the dirt path became grittier and clogged with thick mud.  We straddled huge tractor tire tracks and felt the dull ache of draining bank accounts as our rental went over one bump, then another.  Thorns crept out into the path, digging their claws into our precious Polo as we passed slowly by.  Eventually, caution beat pride and we quieted the engine.  On foot we ducked through brush and padded over mud into the clearing.  Shining in the hot Normandy sun before us was, well, nothing.

The seemingly abandoned space of mostly meadow boasted two structures; one small shack almost entirely consumed by hungry weeds, and another so far gone it was impossible to tell where all four walls once stood.  This could not be La Beauverie.  It just couldn’t.  And it wasn’t.  A quick Google search, a change in zip code, and a fifteen minute ride later, we were entering our Norman paradise, greeting the spotted cows as we came.  Our senses quickly growing drunk with the sights and sounds of sweet seclusion, all trials of the day faded as we climbed the cobbled steps.

a poppy in normandy

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On Wednesday we visited the D-Day beaches.  We looked out over Omaha and Pont du Hoc and the somber sites that changed the world’s perspective of Normandy forever.  We stood amongst the craters of hallowed earth blasted by US bombs and under bunkers from which German soldiers slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Allied troops.  These cliffs saw some of history’s most devastating battles.  But before we saw those cliffs, something incredible happened…

As we were leaving our cozy little cottage at La Beauverie (Bissay’s, as it’s known), I mentioned how I’d been thinking about my grandfather, whom we all called Poppy.  He was a member of the Fighting 36, an American soldier in the second World War.  He was awarded a Purple Heart after surviving a gunshot to his back in the south of France.  He was Sicilian, with tight curls and a secret meatball recipe.  He traveled from Italy into France and across Europe to liberate, and he was younger than I am now when he did it.

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This morning we were walking down the hill towards our car, ready to drive to the coast to see Omaha, when M stopped and turned.

“Hey, look” he pointed.  I was a few steps behind, but immediately recognized the orange-red blossom.  A single red poppy poked up through the overgrown grass, softly waving in the breeze.

We had walked up and down this hill numerous times in the past few days at La Beauverie.  There were daisies, dandelions, and camomile.  Spiky purple clovers exploded up in clusters, and soft lacy elderflowers sprayed the entire property with their cottony cloud.  This bright flower stood alone, beckoning.

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When I approached and bent down, I was surprised yet again.  The dress I’d chosen to wear that day, one of very favorites (I call it my “lady dress” for it’s retro, feminine style), is printed with- yes, poppies.  Can you believe I’d never realized what type of flower they were before this moment?

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It’s hard to describe what I felt upon connecting all of these things, or seeing the fields full of fiery flowers around the beaches of Normandy.  To my shock, when we returned to the estate tonight, my poppy had been trimmed away with many of the other wild flowers by the property’s landscapers.  Though I admit I’d been looking forward to visiting my bold blossom again that evening, it didn’t make me sad exactly.  It felt right.  My poppy came, and did what it- what he-needed to do.  My heart is full.

 

final photo by Michael Collins.